Archive for the ‘restorers’ tag

Last night I was watching the collection of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry movies that my wife gave me for my birthday. Fans of the franchise will recall that Harry Callahan usually had a catchphrase he repeated at opportune moments throughout each film. For Magnum Force, the one with the vigilante rookie cops, it was, “A man has got to know his limitations.” They were words to live by when I first saw the movie at about 10 years old in the 1970s (sanitized for network TV) and now.

It got me thinking about how that phrase applies to us and the cars we own, restore, drive or simply worship. Though this hobby is comprised of diverse people—the common thread tying us together being an affinity for cars (usually vintage ones)—we can still be categorized.

I’m not saying we should be pigeonholed into this group or that and we can never change. Rather, by realizing we have commonality with a certain group, it may help us to determine our own limitations regarding our cars. We can finally stop banging ours heads against the wall and begin removing obstacles that inhibit enjoying our cars in the way we had initially hoped.

See which groups listed below best describe you and then recognize what the strengths and limitations are of that group. Keep in mind, none of them are bad and no one group is better than any another. They are all simply different approaches to enjoying the same hobby. I’ve only covered a few possibilities here. Tell us about other groups you think of.

Driver

What you do: All the enjoyment of owning your car comes from time spent behind the wheel. You’ll make any excuse for a road trip—a ½-gallon of milk at 10 o’clock at night, Yosemite for the weekend—whatever. Your ride has presentable paint, a satisfactory interior, an engine compartment clean enough to work in easily, but no suspension detailing. It’s a driver in the true sense of the word and has that patina. Of course, all mechanical and electrical systems perform exactly as they should. It may even have modern rubber and gas shocks. Every ding and paint chip elicits a story with enough style to make Jean Shepherd envious.

What you don’t do: Pick blades of grass from between the tire treads. Put Armor All on the pedals. Obsess over all those dings and chips.

Cruise-nighter

What you do: You enjoy the social aspect of owning your particular car(s). Cruise nights, car shows, poker runs and charity events are all your favorite excuses for sharing your pride and joy with family and other like-minded people. You don’t mind performing basic maintenance and light mechanical work, but the heavy stuff is left to the professionals. You will subtly modify the car to suit your needs.

What you don’t do: Get bogged down with major mechanical or body work that would interrupt participation in the aforementioned events. Worry about point reductions at the car show for having non-factory air in the tires.

Tuner/Tinkerer

What you do: Your pleasure comes from fixing the little things or making small improvements that separate your car from the loose buckets of bolts, you’ve seen others put together. If it’s a street car, you chase down and repair every squeak and rattle. If the carburetor has a stumble off idle, you track it down and fix it. If there is a high rpm miss you find it. Every light bulb in your car lights, the wipers work on all speeds, as do the heater blower settings and the radio. If you are a racer, you’ re the guy with a weather station, a specific gravity tester for your fuel, carb box full of jets and metering rods and a timing light to cover any situation.

What you don’t do: Body-off restorations or complete teardowns and rebuilds of your engine, transmission or rear.

Modifier/Racer

What you do: Your car is the blank canvas on which your carefully chosen and integrated modifications will transform it into a work of art and/or an incredible performer. With you it’s all about measurable improvements applied to a solid foundation resulting in a unique yet congruous package. Your approach to everything begins with the thought, “How can I make this better, or at least quicker?” Be it a street car a drag racer or a road racer, it doesn’t matter.

What you don’t do: Look for factory paint in a protected area to take a sample and send to a paint house to ensure a perfect match, because you feel the restoration paint colors are always a little off. Retain 9.5-inch drum brakes up front in a 3,800 pound car because the factory did it that way.

Restorer

What you do: Craftsmanship is your hallmark. Factory fresh or better are your only approaches to a project. Satisfaction is found in applying your considerable skills to transform that which is old, rusty and tattered into pristine, shiny and new. You will not only consider selling the car once it’s completed, it’s built into the plan in order to finance the next project. You didn’t build it to drive it or hoard it, so in your mind, the day the restoration was completed was the day the car began to deteriorate, and you don’t want it to be around so you can witness your hard work diminish over time. Generally, you’ll keep it for one, maybe two, show seasons to share it with others and collect a few trophies, and then down the road it goes to make room for the next restoration.

What you don’t do: Race it. Put 10,000 miles on it in the first year. Eat french-fries inside it. Bolt on a set of headers. Install air shocks…unless of course they were a factory option.

Collector

What you do: You have carefully amassed a group of cars that you keep in pristine condition. Having other people appreciate them and create a buzz about them brings you great pride. You may or may not desire to get your hands dirty, but you’re willing to pay professionals to ensure that you can start and drive any of them anywhere at any time. You consider the collection a well-deserved indulgence for all the hard work you did to earn the money to afford them, and you feel that you are guardian of automotive history.

What you don’t do: Scratch and save just to afford to keep the cars in storage. Sweat over every detail of how the cars run, drive or perform—they don’t have to win races, just be capable on the street. Mistreat the cars for any reason.

Hoarder

What you do: You buy another car every chance you get—you can’t pass up a deal. You have three parts cars for a restoration project you know you’ll never start, but it served as a great excuse to buy three unrestorable cars. Presented with the choice of finishing a car you have for say $3,500 or acquiring another car at the same price will definitely have you buying and not building. Your pride in ownership comes from rescuing as many examples as possible of automotive history and being able to look out over the collection you have amassed. You may be happy to help out your friends with parts, even though it sometimes causes separation anxiety. You also like to be known as the guy who has hands-on knowledge of his cars and can explain how just about any parts of them bolt together.

What you don’t do: Finish a project. Sweat over every detail of your drivers. Let anyone junk one of your favorite models, when you feel it can be saved. (Problem is you feel that they can all be saved.)

Trophy Hound

What you do: You have worked diligently on your car and the results are stunning—maybe you did it all yourself, maybe you farmed some or all of it out—and your payoff is to share your efforts at car shows and collect as many trophies as you possibly can. Pride in your ride is derived from the acceptance and affirmation of your peers that they think your car looks a great as you do. You display the trophies at the shows with your car and you have a specific display area for them at home with room for expansion already figured in.

What you don’t do: Drive it dirty. Let it end up in the wrong show class. Let its display area end up under a shedding tree.

One Hit Wonder

What you do: One particular vehicle made such an indelible impression on you that it’s the only car you ever want to own. You are consumed by it and loyal to it and it alone has been your inspiration to learn all of your mechanical and/or body skills. Your car is perfection from stem to stern, and while you now possess the talent to make any vehicle pristine, you just don’t have the motivation to work on anything else. Your pride in ownership is derived from knowing that you got the exact model you wanted and built it into exactly what you wanted it to be. You enjoy discussing who in your family you are going to leave it to when you pass away.

What you don’t do: Work on other peoples’ cars. Sell this car to make room for your next project.

Professor

What you do: You are a major fan who wants to absorb every fact, figure and subtle nuance of your favorite machines, so you collect all the literature and any other available information that you can get your hands on. You may have owned the car(s) in the past but no longer do, yet your special memories still provide motivation to increase your knowledge base. Your pride is derived from being the “go-to-guy” regarding that car(s) in your circle of friends and being able to share what you know with them to help get their projects completed.

What you don’t do: Get your hands dirty or feel the need to satisfy your thirst for knowledge by having said model(s) actually materialize in your garage.

A few years back, I started becoming more aware of the problems that soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan were having, as they tried to return to civilian life. I know, this is not a new problem, but my family was involved in 9/11, so I’ve been personally invested. Anyway, we tossed around some ideas for the magazines here at Hemmings, and I gradually realized that, yeah, we could do some awareness building, but nothing we would do in print could reach enough people.

Then, at the end of 2010, I read an article about the Farmer-Veteran Coalition, whose mission in a nutshell is to help an aging population of farmers by introducing a younger generation to farming. As a sort of side effect, they noted that placement on farms might also be a way to help some veterans re-adjust to life at home.

As I often do, I had spent many days that fall in restoration shops. Not just for Hemmings; I just like hanging out there, and I’m not the only one. Heck, half the shops I know have semi-official “buddy days,” where the doors are open to friends to come on in and work on their personal projects. Beer and grilled meats are occasionally involved.

Even if that doesn’t happen, you can’t stay at a shop for very long and not end up underneath a car. It’s the most natural thing in the world – you’re there because you have some connection to old cars; there’s work to be done; and eventually someone says “hold this.” Then it’s 10 p.m., and you’re covered in grease and eating pizza, surrounded by trim pieces. Your wife will not be happy, but it’s been a good day. Remember the “I did my bit and saved a Split” stickers that VW Transporter owners always used to sport? Taking even the smallest step in helping to make an old car usable again just makes you feel good.

That, it seemed to me, was the ideal environment for a veteran – quiet, straightforward, rewarding. And given the choice, I was betting the Army vet out of the eastside of Detroit would choose a wrenching on a Z28 over growing organic carrots in Idaho. Call it a hunch.

So, okay, I had this idea – now what? I spent last winter and spring trying to figure out how to make this go on my own, but I didn’t have the time or resources to put it together. The odds are the project would have gone to join my graveyard of bright ideas about then, but before I gave up, I reached out to some of the best and brightest car people I knew. Al Navarro came through.

I’ve known and respected Al since he organized the epic (Lotus) 7s at the Dragon meet in 2007, and we had kept in touch. That had been one of the best-organized events I’ve ever attended, so I thought that Al, who is a partner at boutique ad agency Mint, might have some ideas. He did but more than that, as a car guy he liked the whole project.

By September of 2011 Al, Mint CEO Eric Schoenfeld and their team had put together a sponsor meeting, and I went down to the Philadelphia area to make my case. Al surprised us all and unveiled a name for the project, The Road Home, and when we we left we had a commitment from American Collectors Insurance to come on as the charter sponsor. They’ve been involved with military programs for years, and have been incredibly generous in supporting the development that the team has done ever since.

Since September, in fact, my role has been fairly limited. I’ve been spending my nights and weekends talking with restorers and finding potential participants, but the real work has been done by Mint and American Collectors, who have put the legal framework into place, built databases, worked on a PR campaign, contacted veterans and shops, and generally done all the things that stopped me a year ago. On Valentine’s Day, we launched The Road Home website, the central portal where restorers and veterans can sign up for the program.

That is where you, Hemmings Nation, comes in. We’ve started making matches on a case-by-case basis, but our goal is to create a nationwide self-serve database accessible from the website. For that, we need you to reach out to your friends and neighbors at the local VA, the VFW post, your favorite restoration shop, the next cruise-in. Tell them about theroadhomeusa.org, that here’s an opportunity for car people to give back, and for veterans to find help. Sign-up forms for both vets and restorers are available on the website. On the back end, incidentally, I’m sure that American Collectors would love to have additional sponsors to help carry the load.

You’re also welcome to email The Road Home directly (or me, if for some reason you prefer); call them at 917-797-5900; or to post suggestions on The Road Home Facebook page. This isn’t for me, Hemmings or even just the old car hobby: This is for the people who serve our country. Please, pass this along; ‘like’ the Facebook page; post it on your car friends’ walls. The more people we have involved the better this could be, for all of us who love old cars.